'Tent Cities' More Expensive Than Keeping Immigrant Children With Parents, Report Says

Immigrant children separated under the Trump administration's "zero tolerance" policy and housed in "tent cities" next to the Mexican border in Texas could be costlier than it would be to keep families together, according to a report released Wednesday.

Housing a child in one of the newly built government funded tents would cost about $775 per night, an official with the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) told NBC News.

This would be costlier than any other alternatives, such as keeping the children in detention centers or other permeant housing with their parents.

That price stems from the security, air conditioning, medical workers and other government contractors that the facilities require, which is higher than the cost of more permanent housing.

Housing migrant children long-term in HHS facilities like the Casa Padre in Brownsville, Texas, would cost $256 per night, according to NBC News.

Conversely, it would cost the government approximately $5 million to upkeep a tent city with 400 beds for one month. Separated kids on average spend roughly two months in the facility.

The HHS official told NBC News it is "aggressively looking for more potential sites" for tent cities while more children arrive following the Trump administration's policy for those caught crossing the US-Mexico border illegally.

Since the policy announcement in May, more than 2,300 children have been separated from their parents at the border, the Associated Press reported. Over 12,000 immigrants in custody are children aged 18 or younger.

Under the new policy, adults crossing checkpoints at the border receive criminal charges. Any child with the offending adults is taken away and sent to temporary shelters.

Meanwhile, Trump on Wednesday said he was preparing to sign an executive order that would put an end to the separation of families at the border by holding detained parents with their children.

"We’re going to be signing an executive order in a little while," Trump said according to the New York Times. "We’ve got to be keeping families together."